


The Transgression that is Love

by charlottechill



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Biblical Scripture References (Abrahamic Religions), Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, Canon Queer Character of Color, Established Relationship, Fluff, Historical References, Love, M/M, Romance, Sex, Slice of Life, they're insanely sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26052556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/charlottechill
Summary: “There,” Nicolo said from where he knelt. “You are ready for God.”Yusuf’s face told a different story when he looked too long at Nicolo’s eyes. Nicolo stood and turned away. It had been decades since he had tried to tempt the man to unclean acts before prayer.--or--It's almost time to move on. Daily life and daily love briefly intervene.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 10
Kudos: 129





	The Transgression that is Love

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [ElephantofAfrica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElephantOfAfrica/pseuds/ElephantOfAfrica) for her review of my efforts to respectfully reflect Islam, the verisimilitude she provided, and for helping me to avoid disgracing a faith. (It’s an odd balance; part of my attraction to Nicky and Joe is how their ideologies and practices change, in the face of both their relationship and the passage of time.) 
> 
> Any mistakes, offenses, omissions or blasphemies are mine.

They were spending their second summer in a small, out-of-the-way trading village that paid them little mind, the Muslims welcoming merchants from the nearby port and generally ignoring visitors who didn’t overstay their welcomes or fail to make themselves useful. 

After three years of killing each other, two crusades, a decade of running from passions that were clearly no longer murderous, and twenty more years traveling together in chaste despair, one of them had surrendered… sixty years ago.

Each claimed the victory to this day. Each laughed when he tried to recount the story of who had succumbed first, whose hand had touched lips first, who had committed the ma’asiyeah first. Nicolo contended that it was his hand up inside Yusuf’s robe, thrilled by hairless skin down there, and so he had committed the ma’asiyeah. Yusuf pointed out that as a Christian, Nicolo had no business declaring this or that haram and that Nicolo had been as frozen as a deer at the sound of a snapping branch when finally kissed, and hadn’t moved at all while Yusuf had him stripped naked. Therefore, Yusuf had been the first to sin. 

There had been tears and great gulps for air and laughter between times of sating and the rise of new desire, while they watched raw lips heal, bitten shoulder fade back to smooth and healthy pale, and crescents where Yusuf’s blunt nails had dug too deeply into Nicolo’s flesh disappear. Yusuf had ignored his prayers on those days, and his ghusl, and on the morning after their second night proclaimed that he had never been so filthy and disgusting in his life. 

Nicolo had admitted that the intoxicating scent of Yusuf’s body had come to smell much more like a goat pen. 

They had almost killed each other over the insult. Instead Yusuf had reversed their positions and spit him like a pig and knelt above him, hips barely stirring as Nicolo adjusted to the shock of it, of what Yusuf had been feeling those past two days. 

“I know,” Yusuf said, staring down at him with soft eyes. “I wasn’t sure about it the first time you did it to me, either.” He wrinkled his nose. “Or the second. But this,” he said, and nudged his hips forward an inch, “I have done before. We will learn how you will love it… or we won’t. You fulfill me without this.” 

Nicolo felt his throat ache, his eyes water. This man had been enemy and terror, murderer and victim, rising again and again to strike him down, to worry him, to test and challenge and break him… but this, the sweet words when Nicolo hadn’t realized, hadn’t imagined Yusuf would offer himself if he were not a—if he had never—

Yusuf frowned. “Tears? Why tears, Nicolo? It cannot hurt that much, can it?” 

Nicolo shook his head vehemently, could think of no words good enough. Finally, he said, “I was the first?” 

Yusuf frowned. “You thought I’d run around letting men fuck me in the ass?” 

“I didn’t…” he hadn’t asked. Had only ceded to his desperate desire and Yusuf’s urgent pleas, his groans, the way the man’s body yielded to him. “I didn’t think at all.” 

* * *

The village was busy, but small: merchants who docked at the port downriver needed resupply, and the goods they brought here were mostly utilitarian: rugs and fabric, new farming implements, and the raw supplies for a farming town of moderate means. Their tiny market bustled, and he and Yusuf had earned their keep and this one-room cottage by eliminating the bandits who had preyed on the town and stolen sheep and goats from the herders in the hills beyond. It was peaceful here, now—and so, before people decided to think too much about a Muslim and a Christian who shared a roof and broke bread together and kept too much to themselves, it was time to move on.

Nicolo di Genova would miss this place, with its thick walls and airy sense, its slotted view of the deep blue Mediterranean that flowed further than the eye could see. He had thought hard about where they might go; he knew what he would like. But when he inhaled to speak, the mu’azzins’ calls to prayer echoed from the nearby minaret and up from the distant port, colliding in pleasant discord. He let his breath out on a sigh and watched Yusuf lay out his sijada so it pointed toward Makkah and pull off his sandals to perform wudu before his morning prayers. The practice had become as familiar and meditative as watching Yusuf clean and sharpen the razor-fine blade of his scimitar or his razor, the prayers more frequent at one or two times a day… less frequent now than they’d been almost a century ago. 

Nicolo stepped forward. “Let me help.”

Yusuf smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. For a long time—decades—he had rejected the touch of Christian hands before he prayed. For a long time—but less time than Yusuf had resisted his aid—Nicolo had resisted Islam, prayed for Yusuf’s salvation in Christ, and feared they were both doomed to eternal damnation, should an end ever come. 

He had learned, though. And he had served souls long before he had taken up the sword. He no longer felt conflicted, sharing a Muslim’s rituals without need to share his submission to the Prophet (peace be upon him). 

“You should go back to the mosque,” Nicolo said. 

Yusuf’s smile disappeared. Anger flashed. “Fuck that.” He closed his eyes. Blew out a breath. Shook his head. 

“I meant no offense, Yusuf.” Nicolo shrugged. He had been mistreated more than once, suspected of mischief or thievery or worse when found alone in a Muslim home during salah. “I could go with you. Sit in the back behind the wall where the seekers gather.” Even that, he could do, for Yusuf’s soul was more precious to him than any man’s that roamed the earth, and he had eternity, it seemed, to repent his sins against Christ. Time had changed even him, though God had stopped it from carving its passage upon his body.

Yusuf shook his head again. “I would no more ask that of you than you would ask me to take your communion. We pray to the same God, you and me. I’m glad enough for that.” 

Nicolo felt it, that hollowing out of the insides of him, his heart cracking wide open and pouring out love, and faith, and compassion. He set a basin on a table in the corner, by the grate where the water could drain. “Go on, then. I will pray beside you.” 

Yusuf washed his hands and arms while Nicolo washed his feet with the reverence of his own faith and the ritual of Yusuf’s. When Yusuf collected a palmful of water to splash his face, Nicolo cupped his hands beneath Yusuf’s, likely another defilement allowed him, before Yusuf lifted his hands away and finished the ritual of inhaling, washing his ears and mouth, wetting his face and beard, running his hands over his hair. 

“There,” Nicolo said from where he knelt. “You are ready for God.” 

Yusuf’s face told a different story when he looked too long at Nicolo’s eyes. Nicolo stood and turned away. It had been decades since he had tried to tempt the man to unclean acts before prayer. He settled in a chair by the small wooden table in the corner of their room, but Yusuf was still watching him, smiling a little, his brow furrowed. 

Nicolo waved a hand. “God is waiting.” 

“The Iqamah has not—” 

The mu’azzin called the beginning of the Iqamah, and Nicolo smiled to himself when Yusuf sighed and moved to his mat, raised his hands to his ears, then crossed his arms over his chest. 

Nicolo snagged a peach from the clay bowl on the table, nibbling as the salah began. He could see just enough of Yusuf’s profile to know his lips moved, near-silent repetitions. Yusuf knelt when called to kneel. Prostrated himself when called to supplicate. 

Nicolo watched the way Yusuf’s robe pulled taut across his buttocks, shook his head. He was surely damned, but he was at peace with himself and God, for God was love and the popes were mad and never again would he confuse one for the other. 

He removed his rosary from a pocket in his robe, the hard camelthorn beads worn flatter, more oblong from almost a century of use. He had long released himself from many common rituals of his faith, fearful his resurrections were of evil divine but grateful still, because destiny had driven him and Yusuf together. 

Before they entered into battle, he prayed to Saint Michael. He still prayed the Morning Offering, whenever Yusuf took his morning prayers. He sometimes confessed his sins to Yusuf. He prayed the Guardian Angel Prayer even after he realized the Angel had taken on a certain Muslim face in his mind that he could not erase. And he prayed the rosary, said his Our Fathers and his Hail Marys, and meditated on the sorrowful and glorious mysteries: agony and suffering, an ever-present resurrection…. 

He crossed himself and closed his eyes, felt each bead as it slipped past thumb and forefinger, as time wore the dense wood even smoother, ever flatter beneath his fingers. 

When he finished, he opened his eyes to find Yusuf sitting cross-legged on the floor, mat rolled up and put away, his face almost pained though his eyes shone and his mouth smiled. 

Yusuf said simply, “You’re my other half. I am undone by you.”

Yusuf often said words like that, words that—that were complete. That lacked nothing. That said everything. And when he did Nicolo’s chest ached, a dull and physical pain, pressed too full of emotion that had no way out of his body. 

“And I, you.” He eased out of the chair and down to his knees, folding his hands carefully in his lap. Yusuf’s gaze was on his face, taking in his features as he often did. The gaze was so pure, the face so rapt, Nicolo was loath to disturb his attention. He could, with some small movement: a fingernail down his inner arm. A touch to his throat. Even something as innocent as brushing his hair behind his ear, and that look of pure and virtuous love that Nicolo imagined was matched only in the eyes of Christ would heat, and change. Shift from something serene to something earthly, and Yusuf would examine his body with the same focus and attention. Just sit there, staring at him, sometimes for a moment and sometimes for an hour, his dark-eyed gaze traveling the width of his shoulders and length of his torso, the lines of his throat, like a touch. The outlines of his legs beneath his clothes. His bare feet. His hands. 

If Yusuf studied his hands too long, he would then touch them, turn one up and open, then trace the lines of his pale palm and fingers with his thumbs. 

Yusuf drew in a shaky breath. “How is it that you thrill me by doing nothing at all?” 

Nicolo licked his lips to say that he was doing a great deal, that he was thinking of Yusuf’s effect on him and the uncanny power they had over each other—but he had no chance for words. The moistening of his mouth was enough, it seemed. Yusuf surged forward, hands on his jaw, fingers at his nape, mouth on his mouth. 

Sixty years, and the tongue pressing for entry still made him shudder. 

Sixty years and just kneeling there drowning in Yusuf’s love and thinking of Yusuf’s passion still made him hard. 

Sixty years and they knew each other so intimately, in every way either of them could imagine, yet they remained fresh for each other, inspired by each other. Unrepentant in their ardor. 

He slid his fingers along Yusuf’s ribs, defining the channels between, and drew himself up until their bodies pressed close. Shuddered again when their shafts pressed and touched before finding those soft valleys near the crease of the other’s thigh. 

He stroked his hand down Yusuf’s thigh and dragged it back up, bringing the fabric of his robe with him. Waited as Yusuf loosened his belt and dropped it to the side, breathed deep as the familiar naked body was displayed to his gaze. Ran his fingers in smooth armpits and smiled at the way Yusuf’s muscles tightened, his nipples pebbled. 

Their joinings were rarely quick—why should they be, when they had all the time in the world? Why would they be, when Yusuf shared and showed his pleasure with every shaky breath, every ripple of muscle in his belly, every lick of lips and trace of finger and blink of soul-filled eyes? 

Nicolo fell when nudged, back onto the floor, reveled in the weight of Yusuf atop him, the woolly softness of beard against his throat, the moist heat of panted breaths. Without hurry, with careful preparation, they made their choices and Nicolo wrapped a leg over Yusuf’s hip, holding him even as the man pushed up on straight arms to contain himself, to look down between them. 

Desire made Nicolo’s body a furnace and their skin slicked where their bodies touched. Yusuf’s skin gleamed bronze even here, where the day’s desert wind worked to steal sweat the moment it was offered. Yusuf moved gently, his face pained with his restraint, and Nicolo surged against him, defied his efforts, reached between them to finish himself and curled forward to stifle his moan in muscle and skin. Yusuf followed quickly, and the sharp bite at the join of neck and shoulder sent another shock through Nicolo, their bodies still and taut in their pleasure. 

They remained as they were for a long time, until Nicolo feared Yusuf would soften and make everything a mess. “All right,” he sighed. “Get off me.” 

He missed Yusuf as soon as the man moved, but lay still to watch while his beloved used a cloth to clean himself and then gently tended to him. 

Only then did Yusuf sprawl boneless on the floor. 

Nicolo stretched by his side, leaving a few inches between them for the air to flow. “I was going to say…”

Yusuf kneaded his flank and frowned. “What? When?”

Nicolo grinned. “Before first the mu’azzin and the salah and then the temptation of you interrupted me, I was going to say that I want books.”

Yusuf looked surprised. “You want to own books? An expensive hobby, and one that would tie us down.”

Nicolo shook his head. “I have no wish to collect books. But I’d like someplace to read. I want writings of things greater than theology and the histories of the popes, or your precious Qu’ran which I now know better than most believers.”

Yusuf frowned, hand still on Nicolo’s naked flank. “Don’t blaspheme.” 

Nicolo snorted and pressed Yusuf’s hand more firmly against his flesh, but he didn’t tease. “I meant no blasphemy against either of our faiths. I only know that, after a hundred-and-thirty years on this earth, I am ready to immerse myself in something besides Catholic lore or the teachings of the Prophet, peace be upon him.” 

Yusuf leaned forward and kissed him, his beard tickling and light as the feather-like touch of his mouth. “I love you for learning to honor my faith.” 

“I love you for so many reasons, it would take years to name them all.” 

“And you call me the romantic.”

“Because you are. So much more than I.” Nicolo spoke only the truth; he knew his heart was pure, but Yusuf had the heart of a poet. A passionate, deadly, precise, well-honed, sometimes vicious, devoted and faithful poet. 

Yusuf shrugged, and his gaze traveled down between them. That look might have stoked the fire in his loins, had they not just expended the fuel. 

“Your people would call you a heretic for visiting mosques when you are not seeking. For celebrating my holidays. I know you do not believe.” 

Nicolo pursed his lips. It was not an easy matter, even now. “I believe in you, Yusuf. I will always believe in you. In that way, I must believe in Islam at least a little, for it has shaped you into the one I love as passionately as I love God.” 

Yusuf did it again. He got that look about his face like he was observing a holy relic, like his emotion pained him. He leaned forward to touch their foreheads together. They shared breath, as warm as the air around them but moist from their bodies. 

“That _is_ blasphemy,” he whispered.

Nicolo kissed his mouth, used his tongue, then drew back until only their foreheads were touching. “So be it.” 

Yusuf pushed him onto his back and rolled atop him despite the heat and the flaking seed on their bellies. Nicolo wrapped his arms tight, reveled in the too-much of him, the hair at his chest, the weight of his body and always, the way his eyes showed his heart. “You frighten me, Nicolo di Genova. You inspire my heart to greatness and my body to pleasure it had not known before you. I fall asleep to your face and hope I’ll dream of you; I wake early to look upon you. This immortality of ours cannot be a curse, because it has freed us from damnation for loving each other as we do. We are liberated.”

Nicolo’s throat went tight and his heart wept. “You are the romantic one, see?” he whispered, choked. 

Yusuf shook his head but said, “Allah willing, even death—if it ever comes—will not stop such love as ours. We will go to Timbuktu. They have many wonderful libraries there, in plenty of languages to satisfy the scholar in you.”

Nicolo laughed, just a breath of air; Yusuf had made him forget, for a moment, about books. 

\--the end--

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. If you see something (a mistake), say something! 
> 
> ghusl = a ritual cleansing (a full-body bathing) after sexual and some other activities  
> haram = sin (the state of being sinful)  
> Iqamah = call to begin the salah  
> ma’asiyeah = to sin (the action of sinning)  
> mu’azzins = the one who calls people to prayer  
> salah = prayers  
> sijada = prayer mat  
> 


End file.
